This paper describes a method for recognizing Japanese handwritten characters including touching ones. The touching characters are segmented by cutting the connected components in the presegmentation process. The proposed segmentation method consists of the following steps: (1) identification of the touching components by checking the size of character candidate patterns, (2) estimation of the break point and cutting of the components, and (3) generation of character candidate patterns by merging the components with adjacent patterns. The proposed method has the feature that the touching components could be identified even if they are comprised in relatively small patterns. The touching components are to be cut by the stroke width analysis and by the projection image analysis. This cut and merge procedure could segment 134 (88.2%) address lines correctly, out of 152 Japanese address lines having touching portions, and could generate correct character candidate patterns.

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